7 Things You Must Do When a Blog Post Goes Viral

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Every blogger dreams that his/her last blog post (or pin) will go viral.

Last week I was lucky enough to have a couple of posts go viral on social media and it was one of the best feelings ever.

However, your post going viral doesn’t mean you can enjoy and relax. There is more work to be done.

In fact, to get the best out of your viral post, there is a number of tasks you should do as soon as possible. Virality doesn’t last forever!

Going back to my previous example, this wasn’t the first time a post went viral on my blog, I already knew what to do. After tweaking my article, I was able to get over 80 new subscribers and quite a few sales out of a single post.

This is something you should also try. That’s why today I share with you my list of things you must do when a post goes viral:

Check grammar and spelling mistakes

Once you notice that a post is going viral, it’s time to re-read the article again. You want to make it as close to perfection as possible.

I normally find some minor grammar mistakes and formatting errors. Since I’m not a native English speaker, I re-read my articles quite a few times when they go viral. This is a good practice and I recommend you to do it too. Grammarly is an excellent tool to correct the most basic grammar mistakes.

You want to fix typos, broken links and outdated information. Sometimes I end up re-writing most of the article and I try to include more information and value for my audience.

Add a freebie to get subscribers

This is one of my golden tips.

Freebies are the key to get new email subscribers. People love free stuff and if it’s related to the content of the post, the conversion rate will be very high (that’s how I got 80 new subscribers from 1,000 page views).

Something as simple as this form below will do the trick.

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Monetize your article

If you didn’t monetize your article yet, now it’s the right time.

In a typical blog, every post has a purpose, some of them are aimed to get subscriptions, other times they have a sales pitch, etc. However, some blog posts are focused only on providing value to the audience (no monetization involved). Whenever this type of posts goes viral, it’s recommended to monetize it.

Ask yourself: is there any relevant product that I would recommend? If your answer is yes, update your article and start making money.

Link to related articles on your blog

A viral post will bring you hundreds or thousands of new people to your blog. Once these people finish your article, you don’t want them to leave yet, right?

Link to related articles on your blog and your readers will stay more time. Plus, you will have a chance to get new followers.

If you interlink your articles properly, your readers may spend hours reading your content. Every time I find a new blog that I like, I end up having 4 or 5 tabs open with articles I want to read.

Optimize your ads

If a blog post of yours is going viral and you don’t have any affiliate product to promote, you will want to add some ads to your post. Depending on the length of the article I recommend something between two or three ads (one after the first two paragraphs, one in the middle and one at the end).

When you’re getting thousands of page views a day, this trick can make you an extra $50-$150 in a day.

Note: I’m not particularly an “ad” person and I try to keep the number of ads as low as possible. I think that overflowing your post with lots of ads will make your site look spammy.

Fix your images

Are you having old images? Now it’s time to update them.

You can use Canva to create new images (it’s so easy to use). If you also are looking for free stock images, Pixabay is great.

I also use stock images from Haute Stock (this one is not for free). However, you can get free images every month from them.

Keep promoting it

Try to keep your post viral for as long time as possible. Promote it on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook or any other social media you have a presence.

Sometimes, investing in paid ads when the post is losing its virality, will boost it again (something as low as $5-$10 can make a huge difference). Facebook ads is a good way to promote it.

I recently found out that when a post goes viral, Google starts liking it and it gets more organic traffic than a normal post.

Final thoughts

You will realize that a post went viral when you start receiving a few notifications from your social channels, following by a huge increase of email subscriptions.

Go your Google Analytics to check where the traffic is coming from. You should act fast, make all the changes indicated in this post and make sure your article is as close to perfection as possible.

Every hour you delay it, you are leaving money on the table!

Good luck and I wish you a lot of viral posts!

Did you recently get a viral article? Did you just let it go or did you make any changes in your post?

Francisco Anes is a personal finance blogger who loves blogging and spending time with his family. He works from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday but his dream is to reach financial freedom.
On his blog, he writes about saving money, budgeting, pay off debt and making money blogging. Francisco lives with his family in Cambridge, UK.